


I Have Not Winced Nor Cried Aloud

by Devilc



Category: Hell on Wheels (TV)
Genre: Character of Color, Hand Job, M/M, Sexual Tension, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:24:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elam Fergusson ponders the nature of his life and his ... relationship with that stubborn bastard, Cullen Bohannon.  (Set during 1.07 "Revelations")</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have Not Winced Nor Cried Aloud

**Author's Note:**

  * For [r_lee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_lee/gifts).



> Dear r_lee,
> 
> In your Dear Author letter, you said:  
> {snip} "I'm also a big fan of the grudging friendship between Bohannon and Elam Ferguson, so an exploration of that would be wonderful as well.
> 
> Basically, I want a look at what makes Bohannon choose the things he does. Any of the characters on the list are welcome, so long as Bohannon and his motivations are central to the story. I don't need him to be a hero; I just need him to be his own prickly obstinate self."
> 
> And
> 
> "As far as slash goes, it's not something I typically write or seek out to read but if it's something you typically write or are inspired to write here, I won't say no."
> 
> 1) You don't ever want a battle in your head between Cullen Bohannon and Elam Fergusson about who's going to be ~~on top~~ narrating the story. 
> 
> 2) I tried hard to make it not slashy, but Elam wasn't having it, and Cullen's got nothing on him when it comes to being an obstinate mule-headed cuss. 
> 
> 3) I had a lot of fun writing this story. Part of what makes these two such compelling characters and their unique friendship so interesting is that they are so, very, very alike.
> 
> \----  
> Title and quote taken from "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

> Out of the night that covers me,  
>  Black as the pit from pole to pole,  
>  I thank whatever gods may be  
>  For my unconquerable soul.

* * *

When Elam first learned to read it amazed him how many words there were in books -- how would he ever learn them all, especially the ones he never heard being used? -- and also, there were so many words that meant the same thing or demarcated (now _there_ was a $5 word) shades of meaning. It was like finding that the hatchet in your hand had suddenly become a fillet knife, one with a keen edge that could cut mighty fine, but at the same time it could still cleave if you needed it to.

Not only that, but when it came to all these words and their various shades of meaning, there were also the rules, most of them not written, just things you had to learn (often the hard way) about how, when, and for whom to use which word.

For example, when Mr. Fergusson, his master (and father) took Elam into the house and taught him to read, and then, on top of that, trotted him out in front of guests and had him read from the Holy Bible, that was audacity _and_ temerity. Temerity, because Mr. Fergusson had broken the law and taught a slave to read. Audacity because he was parading his "yard child" in front of his wife and neighbors.

On the other hand, slaves like Elam never showed audacity or temerity. For them, there was only the back of master's hand, the strap, or the overseer’s whip for being "uppity."

Whatever else a person wanted to call this particular quality: impudence, cheekiness, dauntlessness, Elam had _plenty_ of it. Always had. Always would.

It meant he tried to steal himself free more than once, finally succeeding when he heard that Union troops were within reach. He made a break for it, with only the clothes on his back, running in the night until he met them on the road. (He damned near got shot by a nervous sentry for his trouble.)

It meant he looked White men in the eye.

It meant he backtalked that Cullen Bohannon when he'd earned himself an earful for ~~being a man who listened to reason once you rubbed his face in it~~ ~~being a man with a streak of decency and fairness in him, once you dug down to it~~ ~~treating Elam like a man one minute, and calling him a house boy who'd forgotten his place, the next~~ being Cullen goddamned infuriating Bohannon, that's what.

Whatever _IT_ was, It got Elam made an official walking boss to the freedmen after he whipped Bohannon in that fight ... in part because Bohannon was man enough to admit it.

(Toole and his band of bogtrotting papists hadn't liked it one bit, but none of them had the stones to step to Bohannon.)

It meant that Bohannon now called him _Mister_ Fergusson, even in front of White men.

But this quality also came with a mighty high price. Such as a righteous strapping when he got caught reading the Bible to his master's other slaves while they worked in curing shed. (His reading lessons ended after that.) Telling master's daughter that he was her half-brother got him a proper whipping from the overseer. (And saw him sent down from the house to the fields.) Running away the first time left him with scars from his shackles around his wrists and ankles, not to mention a flogging whose braided scars he still bore down his back.

Hell, earlier this morning, It got him lynched in the saloon for being reckless enough to even _think_ he was good enough for a White woman, even though Eva was the lowest whore in the camp. 

The last thing Elam ever expected to see as his vision greyed out and the blackness closed in was Cullen Bohannon on that horse, all big damn hero, shooting the paddy stupid enough to draw down on him, and then making Toole cut him down.

Because ... if they were going to string him up over a White whore, Elam didn't want to know what would happen if they ever found out that --

(He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, because this wasn't easy to admit, even to himself.)

\-- there had been boys in master's barn, mostly just blowing off steam as boys do. And then when Elam was older, there was that cousin of his master’s who talked so sweet at first and then laid all the blame on Elam for “enticing him into lustful perversion.” (He never told anybody else like he threatened to --more than once -- but at the same time Elam never dared say “no.”) 

For the first time, Elam _wanted_ to grapple with a man, and not a Colored man like himself, but a White man.

Cullen mule-head peckerwood Bohannon, that's who.

As he gazed out at the stars and the horizon and let the heat from the campfire ease the ache in his bones, Elam laughed on the inside. Life had been easy, simple, and ... _shitty_ before Bohannon came to Hell on Wheels. Swallow down rage all week. Get paid on Friday. Get a bottle of corn whiskey and down it. Raise cain. Sweat out his hangover on Saturday. Rest on Sunday. Rise and repeat the cycle on Monday. Then Bohannon showed up and turned everything bottom side up -- even before he finished his first day in camp. And what’s more, Bohannon _kept on_ turning everything upside down, or making it all back to front and front to back.

Just thinking about all the ways Bohannon had upended life as he knew it got Elam so riled up inside that he almost blurted out, "Man, why you always got to be so _difficult_?!" But that would've made no sense to what Bohannon had just said, and it probably would have angered him, given he'd just put some _heavy_ words out there for Elam to hear. Right now, if he tried to explain to Bohannon what he'd done by being _so ..._ , by not being like the other White men ... nothing good would come of it. Better to just let Bohannon think he was asleep or being surly. Simpler. Less complicated, and with Bohannon, that was always a good thing.

It would have worked, too, except that, come that cold, grey, in-between time before sunrise, Elam woke and headed for the bushes at the edge of the clearing and tried to empty a brick hard bladder. Only, a man can't piss with a raging hard on. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, hoping that _that_ , and the crispness of the morning air would convince his cock to stand down.

(Fuck no.)

Just as he admitted to himself that this wasn't the usual morning stiffness and that he was going to have to do something about it, Bohannon's voice, flat calm and damn near in his ear, "You want a hand with that, Fergusson?" caused Elam to jump. Before he could say, yes, no, thank god, or go to hell, Bohannon continued, "For medicinal purposes, of course." His hand hovered expectantly, close enough that Elam could feel the heat from it.

" _Well?"_ Bohannon asked, pressing the matter, so near that Elam felt as much as heard him speak.

Elam kept his eyes steadfastly focused on the cottonwood leaves in front of them. _Why do you always got to be so difficult, Bohannon? Why?_ "I ain't laid you out," he replied a skip-beat later, voice low and gritty.

Bohannon's snort of laughter ghosted against his neck a moment before that big, hot, strong, _calloused_ hand wrapped around his cock and went to work.

(OhGod!)

Elam wanted to last. But no man could have lasted long against the steady on rhythm Bohannon set. (Bohannon did this twisting thing with his thumb, too -- just like Elam did -- and it felt so good that he couldn’t find the mental capacity to be irritated by that fact.) He closed his eyes and gave in to the rock-solid warmth pressed against his back, and breathed in the way that Bohannon smelled (smoke and wool and leather, gunpowder, and an honest man's sweat), and rode the just-on-the-edge-of-hearing rasp in Bohannon's breath.

Bohannon steadied him, of course, when his legs turned to jelly in the instant after he finished his squirting. 

"Better?" He asked when Elam finally stopped jittering and staggering like a newborn calf. The calmness of the word belied the knowing twinkle in his eye.

Elam meant to say thank you, or ask if Bohannon would like him to return the favor, but instead he gasped, "Man, why do you _always_ got to be so difficult?" the moment his mouth could form words.

Bohannon -- damn him -- roared with laughter, taking his hat off and slapping it against his leg for good measure. "Don't know no other way," he said when he finally got a hold of himself. "Don't know no other way," he repeated softly as his eyes gazed out over the horizon.

They made their way back in silence to the camp where Elam got a small fire going from the banked ashes of last night’s blaze. As he measured coffee into the pot -- because of course a man of Bohannon’s kind kept supplies for a night or two out on the range as part of the standard kit on his horse -- Elam pondered the fact that they had a choice here. They could take off across the range and hope that running brought them to a better place, or they could turn and face what waited for them back at Hell on Wheels. Dangerous, either way.

(And if they lived, somewhere in there, they’d have to face themselves. That was also dangerous.)

As he poured the steaming black brew --strong enough to float an iron spike on, the only way worth making it -- into Bohannon’s mug, Elam felt himself grinning in spite of everything. “I don’t know any other way to be, neither.” 

Bohannon blew on his coffee, swallowed a generous gulp, and as his eyes met Elam’s, the look in them was forthright and accepting, as if he gazed into a mirror. “Well then, ain’t we just peas in a pod?”

Elam took a sip of his coffee and, like a lot of things in his life, found it bitter but good. “Yeah, ain’t we just.” 

Ain’t. We. Just.


End file.
